Territories: A Trans-Cultural Journal of Regional Studies

Albeit young disciplines, Migration and Diaspora Studies are gaining momentum and presence in the post-pandemic world due to the disruptive event of the pandemic itself having a twofold effect: on the one hand, the privation of travelling and lock-down effects assured a collective awareness of autonomy and mobility; on the other, and in the process, virtual and online environments seemed to stabilize as long-haul side-effects created points-of-contact that were not considered before. Within this context, minor/small cultures also had the chance to review their practices and policies. In the case of the Basque Diaspora, the main frame that problematizes the discipline remains, namely, displacement. Yet, it seems that a “before Paul” diaspora still exists, in the term Alain Badiou uses to refer to the biblical figure of Paul the Apostle as a foundation for universalism. By erasing the differences between Jews and Gentiles, Paul—according to Badiou—overcomes the political issue of salvation by enabling the higher condition of truths. Something similar might be said about the traditional arrangement of diasporas as mirrors of “original” repositories of identity markers. This paper discusses the before/after pandemic possibilities and the re-arrangement of cultural and identity references by posing the notion of deferred identities as a conceptual unit to explain and elaborate further explanations to the problems of the traditional Basque Diaspora